Dark corners of Chinese streamer behind a terrible income of $ 100,000 / month

In China, many teenagers have dropped out of school to pursue their dream of getting rich from the Internet with streamer jobs. Even farmers also leave their fields to search for luck on the Internet.

Yu Li is a young man living in Shenyang Province earning a living by livestream. The livestream takes a long time on social media YY in a studio and that combines a mix of chat, music and humor. Fans will send you 'virtual gifts' but they are worth real money.

In addition, Yu Li also founded and runs a company specializing in training and promoting people who want to become stars on the Internet called Wudi.

Yu Li in a livestream on YY.

Currently, livestream is becoming popular all over the world and China is the most explosive nation, surpassing the US. According to iResearch, in 2016 the Chinese livestream market is worth at least 3 billion USD, up by 180% over the previous year and is expected to increase further in the future. China has 700 million Internet users and about half of them have used livestream applications - more than the US population.

In China, livestreams 'stars' have a high income, mostly from fans.

Because Facebook and Google are still blocked in China, other social networks like Tencent and YY are growing.

Yu Li is from Manchuria. He became a mechanic at the age of 16. In his free time, Yu often visits Internet cafes. He learned an interesting pronunciation when playing the game and used it in his later livestreams.

In 2014, Yu founded Wudi. Meanwhile, income from livestream and Yu's business has reached more than 100,000 USD / month. Yu's company always needs new recruits and Lu Yongzhi, a 26-year-old man who used to be a cattle trader, is one of them.

At the beginning of livestream Lu had to sleep on a friend's floor. Every day he had to work for nearly 10 hours but only earned little money. However, after several years of signing a contract with Yu, Lu was able to earn thousands of dollars each month and use luxury goods.

Lu was a cattle trader in his hometown.

The popularity and tremendous income of "stars" like Yu have made many Chinese youth, even farmers, pursue their dream of getting rich from the Internet.

Appearance plays an important role in livestream. So to have a good-looking face for work, many people don't even hesitate to go for cosmetic surgery on the face. However, Yu also advised that botox, filler or skin whitening would be less risky than cosmetic surgery.

Currently, Chinese censors have set the boundary between sensual and sexuality, so the offensive livestream will be repressed.

However, the problem caused some streamer concerns is the payment structure. Every $ 1,000 virtual gift, YY has accounted for 50%, 20% transferred to the manager and finally the streamer only received a few hundred dollars only.

Lu Mingming, a 25-year-old rookie, who regularly spends hours every day, 7 days a week in the studio to live stream, says the hardest part is always being cute and happy for hours on end.

Every time livestream, Lu Mingming always has to be happy.

There are streamer sharing that, working all day around the studio makes them feel boring and difficult to think of new ideas. Even Yu, the livestream star and the boss of a company sometimes feel lost in their beliefs and doubts about virtual life.

He said that in the past, he could do anything he wanted but now, despite having money, he must be careful in every word.